That's the thing, those are the guaranteed democrat voters you're talking about.  They'll vote democrat no matter who's on the ticket.  The problem is the white voters, even moreso, the young white voters.  A democrat who can pull in that crowd is like an unstoppable election god.  

A good portion of Trump's voters live outside the urban areas and they generally don't share Bernie Sander's progressive views so I don't see how most of them would be inclined to switch to him ... 

And not to be anti-semite but Sander's is also known to be a Jew in a country full of christians so sectarian bias would still be an issue for him even among christian democrats ... 

Hillary had a campaigning issue with the non-urban white voters (that much was true when Bill Clinton was trying to steer the sinking ship known as Hillary's campaign) and Bernie is a tough sell to minorities plus he's just not compatible with a whole lot of countryside ...

Demographics are not destiny and we learn that from the recent election that more minorities favoured Trump over Romney in the past election according to exit polls ... 

African americans once used to be a base of republican voters which were popular with Lincoln but now that's not true anymore so democrats shouldn't keep assuming that they can take minorities for granted ... 

That might be the case for the odd minority, but now you've run into some very dicey logic.  A far cry from your original.  Heck, you're trying to claim minorities would have voted Trump.  The few minorities who voted Trump probably just did so because they found Hillary almost as vile or liked his populist message.  

Bernie probably has a better history among minorities than an actual minority.  The guy actually chained himself up with black people to protest his universities segregation of black and white students.  This was WELL before it was popular to do so.  Hillary on the other hand is the one with the famous quote of calling black people "super predators". 

I don't think Sanders would've had much problem with the minority vote either.

He was gaining with that crowd as is, doing things like webcasts with rapper Killer Mike. He was also more exciting to younger voters, that and a distaste for Trump would've worked to his favor with establishment Democrats over time. People were awfully butt-hurt in 2008 as well when Obama got the nomination over Clinton, but they all rallied around Obama by Oct '08. 

People didn't dislike Bernie, they just didn't know him as well as they know the Clintons, give him a DNC and several more months to campaign on and he would likely have gotten similar numbers as Hillary with minorities. There's nothing intrinsically popular about Hilary with minorities and as was said above, Bernie has a terrific history in the civil rights movement. If it was that much of a concern he also could've just ran a minority VP pick if you want to be all calculating about it. 

Minorities will be the majority in America soon anyway, so the Republican party will eventually have to adjust to that, Trump's path is not a long term formula for anything, it's more like the last gasp of preying on the anxities of a shrinking demographic. It won't work forever because very 4 years more of those people die off, and the younger portion of America is already more than 50% minority. So dog whistle racism is not going to work forever. 

I didn't claim that, I claimed that Trump had more support from the minorities than Romney did according to exit polls and thus it was one part that formed my argument that demographics don't translate into destiny ... 

Perception is all that matters, if the african americans view Clinton favourably compared Sanders despite her controversies then they must've seen other qualities in her that outweighed her history ... (More white women voted for Trump than Clinton according to exit polls despite his lewd comments in the famous video tape! Clinton somehow lost to Trump in that demographic despite being a white women herself LOL) 

Sander's had an issue with appealing to african americans whether you like it or not since he couldn't win ANY of these states in primaries with a high precentage of them such as District of Columbia, Mississipi, Louisana, Georgia, Maryland, South Carolina, Alabama, and Virginia. In fact Bernie was curb stomped by Clinton in those states! (Beaten by Clinton from margins ranging anywhere from 10% to almost 50%!) 

Bernie would've a tough time getting votes in Philadelphia which would more likely give Pennsylvania to Trump than Clinton in addition to that Trump may have even stolen Virginia from the electoral map if Sander's was running ...

Blacks just don't feel the bern ... 

There was always going to be a little natural uptick with minorities this election for Republicans I think because Obama was not on the ticket.

You're not going to get the same black voter turn out as you would with Obama particularily with younger kids, take out the younger voters and older people of every ethnicity tend to skew more Republican, so that's what I think sways that.

Trump still got absolutely destroyed with minorities and would have against Bernie too. Bernie simply would've gotten more of the white male vote and the younger voter IMO, it wouldn't even neccessarily have to be huge numbers either. 80,000 here, 20,000 there, etc. does it. 

Sanders' rallies always reminded me more of Obama's rallies. More energy, more fun (hate to say it, but this matters), and more populist. Hilary has been noted as someone that really does not like to campaign a lot. She's good in debates, but the rallying part, she doesn't like to do, she had a very low number of rallies compared to what Obama and Bill Clinton did, Bernie also seemed to genuinely love rallies.

She also didn't have a great slogan or branding "I'm With Her" ... is no "Yes We Can" or "Feel the Bern" or "Make America Great Again", she didn't really have any signature issue that she was running on. With a few fixes she probably could have won, some poor branding and a weak campaigning schedule hurt her. Not sure if Tim Kaine was really a great pick either for a running mate. 

We know for a fact that the primaries were rigged by the DNC. Why are we using data from the primaries as an indicative of a hypothetical election results?

If Bernie won, he would've continued building momentum and Hillary voters would've voted for him. Unlike the bernie bros who vowed to #neverhillary.

10% of dems voted for Trump, I highly doubt that would've happened if Sanders replaced Hillary.

Trump would've lost voters to Sanders if people got to know about him more, he always stood against immigration and trade deals, the two issues that pushed Trump to win.

He was always against the Iraq war and always pro-gay marriage. You can't make a video of Sanders lying for 15 minutes straight like you could with Hillary and Trump.

Sanders is Trump in many ways, but without the personal baggage and the questionable personality. He could've won. Even dumb Hillary lost by few points here and there, why are you making it out to be an impossible mission for Sanders?

To the *middle class* I would agree once people get to know Bernie is probably the most likable candidate in a long, long time. 

Obama has more charisma and booming speech ability, but Sanders might be even better at speaking to the "common man/woman". You can tell he is really genuine about it too, it's no sales job, Hillary always had problems with this. 

Hillary is not a terrible candidate, but she is deficient in some areas. If she had ran in 2004, I think she probably could've beaten George W. Bush. In a campaign against a more conventional opponent she probably does well. I think she would've beaten Ted Cruz (though narrowly), Jeb Bush, or Ben Carson this cycle too, but Marco Rubio probably would've presented her a lot of problems. 

Nate Silver disagrees in his analysis ... (I too didn't think it was rigged but I can't deny that some rules just don't favour Sander's however at the same time I can't overlook the extra 3 and a half a million votes she got.) 

You're right that 10% of dems wouldn't have voted for Trump if Sanders was running the general election. In fact Trump would've gotten even more democrats to switch! It works both ways LOL ...

Bernie Sander's is not against immigration, in fact he is pro-immigration so he wouldn't use similar rhetoric like Trump did against Muslims ...

"Dumb" Hillary was arguably the Democrats best chance at the whitehouse all things considered when she could court minorities all around and the likely voters too since she also had some appeal to older voters as well ... 

Also Sanders is hardly like Trump from lifestyles, history, and all the way to beliefs ... (Rich vs Poor Christian vs Jewish Stable employment vs Unstable employment Businessman vs Politican Socially progessive vs Socially moderate Fiscally progressive vs Fiscally moderate Nationalism vs Anti-nationalism etc) 

There's more to Trump's countryside appeal than just economic nationalism and pseudo-political independence plus it's hard to control the executive branch for more than two elections so the cycle wouldn't have been favourable to Bernie either along with the minorities ... 

One other knock I'd put on Clinton is she rarely/never mentioned jobs in any of her messaging. Trump and Sanders constantly talked about jobs.

Which is odd because Bill Clinton created more jobs than any president in modern history (I think actually ever, even during his first term before the internet boom he created a ton of jobs).

That's just poor branding and messaging. They allowed every negative Clinton slam to stick, but the Clinton presidency was actually incredibly prosperous economoically. Not sure why they didn't really try to play that angle up more.